Kinflicks by Lisa Alther Read Free Book Online

sports shirt and slacks, his light brown crew cut still damp from the shower. People kept clapping him on the back and saying, “Great game, Sparky!” Joe Bob would smile his moronic smile and look at the floor with a modest shrug.
    Then, as though in response to my yearnings from the sidelines, he sauntered up to me, fans falling away from him on every side like from Christ on Palm Sunday, and introduced himself. Or rather, he presented himself, since he correctly assumed that everyone already knew who he was.
    â€œSay hey!” he said with his dopey smile, which smile I tried to overlook the whole time I dated him. It was a smile in excess of any possible stimulus. In fact, now that I think about it, Joe-Bob’s smile was usually unrelated to external stimuli and generally appeared at the most unlikely or inappropriate times. This smile (I dwell on it so obsessively because, like Mona Lisa’s, it embodied his very essence) contorted his entire face. Most people smile from their noses downward. But not Joe Bob. His smile narrowed his eyes to slits, raised his cheekbones to temple level, wrinkled his forehead, and lifted his crew cut. And in spite of the exaggerated width of the smile, his lips never parted, probably because of his omnipresent wad of Juicy Fruit gum, which he minced daintily with his front teeth. In short, Joe Bob’s smile was demented. But I managed to overlook this fact almost until the day I left him because I wasn’t remotely interested in the state of his mind.
    It was his remarkable body that occupied virtually all my thoughts. I loved the way he had no visible neck, his head being permanently stove into his shoulders from leading with it in blocking and tackling. I worshipped his chipped front teeth and mangled upper lip from the time he’d dropped the barbell on his face while trying to press 275 pounds. I adored the Kirk Douglas cleft that made his chin look like an upside-down heart, which cleft was actually a crater from an opponent’s cleat. I admired the way his left eye had only half an eyebrow from once when he had hit the linesman’s stake after being tackled. Joe Bob was evidently indestructible — a quality of incalculable appeal for someone like me, who was braced for disaster around every corner. But most of all, I loved that sunken valley down the middle of his spine, with the rugged ranges of muscle upon muscle rising up on either side. I loved to hold them, one hand on each ridge, as we danced.
    Joe Bob didn’t talk much. He preferred to be known by his actions. But when he did talk, his voice was soft and babyish; he would grin and open his mouth much wider than necessary and make flapping sounds. In retrospect, I realize that he had a speech defect, but at the time at Hullsport High a soft baby talk in imitation of Big Sparky was all the rage. His favorite expression, and hence the favorite expression of the entire school, was “Do whut?” He said “Do whut?” punctuated by his demented grin every time he didn’t understand what someone had said to him, which was often. It was an all-purpose question, the equivalent of “I beg your pardon?”
    For example, after saying “Say hey!” to me at the victory dance, he next asked, “Why haven’t ah seed you around before?” As though it were his personal prerogative to approve each student at Hullsport High.
    â€œI’m a sophomore,” I explained faintly, dazzled to be the sole focus of his attention. The music was so loud that it drowned me out.
    Joe Bob grinned and tilted his head down and said, “Do whut?”
    â€œA sophomore!” I yelled. “I’m a sophomore!”
    He nodded, still grinning. “Wanna dance?”
    And so we performed those mating rituals called the boogaloo and the chicken scratch. We circled each other slowly with carefully calculated flailings of arms and legs, with coyly disguised thrusts of hips